Notices by Lew Perin (babelcarp@social.tchncs.de)

@Gargron So is the “Translate” link that appears in many toots on the Mastodon web app not a use of an LLM?

@gargron You mean ban all cars in the USA?

@newsguyusa

@gargron There aren’t any cars allowed in Central Park except for police and parks dept. vehicles.

@newsguyusa

This is definitely the dumbest scam I’ve heard about so far this year, and the most amusing:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/us/bear-suit-insurance-fraud-california.html?unlocked_article_code=1.cFA.HQ40.PYp_-6nJLZBz&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Signs at the Park Slope #nokings demo

According to the NY Times:

“ Iran has said it is only targeting vessels linked to the United States and its allies, and is allowing ships carrying oil to China to cross the strait.”

Doesn’t this cast doubt on the idea that the Strait has been mined?

It’s a beautiful fall day in Brooklyn, and the No Kings march from Grand Army Plaza was bigger than they must have planned for; the way the line of march looped around, you could see there were still people massed at the beginning an hour and a half after the parade stepped off.

My favorite sign: KASH FLIPS FIRST, RIGHT?

It was nice to meet one of the founders of CockroachDB and his family. His 8(?)-year-old daughter totally understands how robust cockroaches are.

Sadly, the march was at least 90% white.

#nokings #nyc

I would like to think that a well-designed robotic exo-hand could safely increase a pianist’s dexterity: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15673310

But I can’t help thinking of how, nearly two centuries ago, Robert Schumann’s use of a mechanical aid helped end his career as a performing pianist: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15673310

The Big Guy probably doesn’t know it, but during the first Trump administration the federal govt put a plaque on a social housing project originally built for (Finnish) immigrants.

Scandinavians left Sunset Park decades ago, and 53 St between 8 and 9 Avenues in Brooklyn is now heavily Chinese.

Today we took the advice of one of Spouse’s favorite Bavarian relatives and spent most of the day in Alt-Kőpenick on the eastern outskirts of Berlin. It’s a cute old town with some terrific architecture plus an old castle with parklike grounds and, in the castle proper, a pretty amazing museum of objects created to support the lifestyles of European nobility over many centuries.

(Visiting the museum was a way to use up the last day of our 3-day Berlin museum passes.)

In the museum grounds there’s a surprising early twentieth century comic statue of a chicken thief.

In the town there’s some architecture that isn’t exactly graceful, but in its spiky, somewhat stiff way shows what you can do with fancy bricklaying. This is the Rathaus.

Before checking out of our hotel and heading up to Hamburg, we took one last stroll around Schőneberg. This was the premier LGBTQ neighborhood in the Weimar era, and hey, right around the corner from the hotel there’s a lesbian bar.

At a time when in NYC “straphanger” is even more obsolete than “token booth”, the Berlin U-bahn still has straps.

But only short people use them; others prefer the stability of the rigid yellow bars the straps are tethered to.

Since a free Deutschlandticket itinerary from Berlin to Hamburg would be too complex and chancy—six hops or so—we settled for Flixbus.

Long stretches of flat fields often interrupted by windmills or solar arrays. Sometimes you see sheep grazing among the solar panels, which I guess prevents the vegetation from interfering with collecting sunlight.

Today Spouse’s indefatigable nephew Florian walked us around the city, first the swanky district along the Alster River, and then over to the Elbe and the port that made the city great.

The Speicherstadt (warehouse district) has long rows of old brick warehouses separated by canalized arms of the Elbe.

Maybe it wasn’t smart to start our annual Germany trip on (USA) Labor Day?

But we got to JFK like true stingy NYC sophisticates, taking the A train to Lefferts Blvd and getting takeout from one of the roti shops there before transferring for free to the Q10 Limited, which gets you to the airport quickly.

And actually we breezed through bag check and security on supposedly a crushingly heavy travel day. Go figure!

Next stop Berlin…

Every time I ride through one of the tunnels under the Hudson River I wonder what it would be like to walk through it.

Florian took us on foot through the old (1911) tunnel under the Elbe and back. This one doesn’t take autos, but there are lots of bikes.

Wooden utensils with our airline food? Actually they’re made of bamboo, and I managed to get a splinter. But I’m not gonna sue Delta, I’m so magnanimous.

The flight attendant says on flights terminating in the USA the bamboo cutlery gets burned along with the rest of the food service trash. On flights to Germany? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you want to see how grumpy a given city can make you, try flying into it sleepless early in the morning of a hot day, knowing you can’t change into shorts and sandals till your hotel’s 3PM check-in time.

That was us today in Berlin.